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Star Parker: Racism not the problem

It is no accident that race rhetoric has been ramping up at a time when racial politics can be the key determinant for control of the Senate.

At least three states — North Carolina, Louisiana, and Arkansas — are red states with vulnerable Democrat senators up for re-election that have large black populations.

Can racism really be as rampant in America as current rhetoric implies?

A Google search for “racism” will produce a long list of articles from the most recent week’s news claiming racism on issue after issue of national concern.

We need to give more careful thought to whether racism is as pervasive as all the rhetoric seems to imply or whether other factors are driving the problems that continue to plague non-white communities. If so, perhaps all the rhetoric about race we’re hearing reflects more Democratic political operations than realities of America.

In important ways, American attitudes on race have changed dramatically.

According to Gallup, in 1958 only 4 percent of Americans believed marriage between individuals of different races was acceptable. Today 87 percent say interracial marriage is okay. A society, in which almost 90 percent of people believe it is just fine for individuals of different races to marry and have children together, can hardly be called a racist society.

And, of course, a black man today sits in the White House.

Granted, in 2012 Republican Mitt Romney won 61 percent of the white vote. But 39 percent of whites voted for the black, Democrat candidate.

It turns out, as the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza wrote last year, that in every presidential election since 1972, the average percentage white vote for the Democrat candidate was just about the same as what Obama got in in 2012 — around 39 percent.

So a real headline about election of our first black president was that race had hardly had any impact at all on voting patterns. The percentage of whites voting Republican was around the norm as was the percentage of whites voting for the Democrat. A black Democrat did not drive away white Democrats.

Cillizza shows that the driving political reality of recent presidential elections has been the growing non-white percentage of the electorate and that most of these non-white Americans support Democrats.

In 1980, 88 percent of the electorate was white compared to 72 percent in 2012. Also, 23 percent of Democrat voters were non-white compared to 44 percent in 2012. In 1980, 4 percent of Republican voters were non-white compared to 11 percent in 2012.

If the key difference between the two parties is about big government versus limited government, much of what America’s future will look like will ride on whether Republicans can make headway with non-white voters with a limited government message.

There is potential for doing so if Republicans get down to the work that needs to be done.

Since the Civil Rights Act in 1964, black economic progress on average compared to the white population has been dismal. The gap in black household income compared to white household income has grown, average black household wealth as a percentage of average white household wealth has shrunk, and the percentage of black poverty has remained almost constant at three times greater than white poverty.

These realities reflect destructive big government policies that grip these communities. But Democrats who want to continue to sell these policies will continue on the racism message and claim that this is what limited government ideas are about.

Republicans need to get truth to black populations in these key vulnerable states. They need to hear about limited government reforms that will help them. That can determine who controls the Senate next year.